Flat Ranch

Flat Ranch is owned by the Nature Conservancy and is a large tract of land about two miles north of our place. Like us, they are in the region known as Henry's Lake Flats. Henry's Lake is a high mountain lake which is nestled up against the mountains that form the continental divide. Stretching south of the lake for five or ten miles is a broad flat valley which is largely treeless and mostly devoid of houses. Most of the acreage is owned by cattle ranchers.

Flat Ranch is a chunk of land about three miles long which is being maintained for conservation purposes. The Henry's Lake Outlet runs through the Flat Ranch and can be traversed by canoe. Mike and I are hoping to float it with our little pontoon rowboats. Throughout the summer, Flat Ranch hosts a series of educational talks twice a week. Last week's talks were on forest fires and protecting your home, and on noxious weeds. Our house is fairly safe from forest fires because our trees are separated from the forest by many acres of treeless rangeland. We are not so well protected from the noxious weeds, however.

Our nearest neighbor has a profusion of yellow sweet clover growing near our property, and we have discovered Canadian thistle growing in a patch where our well had been drilled. We surmise that it may have been brought in by the drilling rig. These are both classed as noxious weeds because they were introduced from another continent (despite the name), and they can displace native species. The Canadian thistle is not as pretty as other thistle species that I have known, and it is excessively thorny, even for a thistle. Since it has already flowered, we were advised to pull up the plants and bag them to prevent the seeds from being distributed. I suggested burning them (after pulling them up), but apparently, noxious weeds are normally just hauled to the dump.